Monday, December 17, 2012

(Almost) Merry Christmas! Christmas is in just over a week! Are you guys ready yet? It's coming up pretty quick. I'm probably not going to see a white Christmas in Japan. It's not quite cold enough to snow. I guess Tokyo is kinda like Washington in the aspect that it doesn't snow very often, but it still rains even during the winter. I'm looking forward to Christmas though. There's going to be quite a few fun things going on.

So last week for p-day we went bowling as a district... again. You know, when everyone said that I'd be playing a lot of b-ball on my mission, I thought they were talking about basket ball, not bowling. Haha! But yeah, that was really fun. There are some really cool missionaries in our district, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve with them. Let's see, what were some other highlights...

Christmas cards we made for people here

So, our recent convert Sister Ishihara brought her son with her AB lesson this week. That means that instead of teaching an AB lesson like we thought we were going to, we ended up teaching a first lesson to her son. He's 17, and a junior in high school, but he's pretty cool and he has a pretty strong interest in the church. I'm sure his mom being baptized may have had something to do with that. So that was really cool, but the miracle doesn't stop there! On Sunday, Sister Ishihara came to Church with her son. But, not only did she bring her son, but her husband (who we've never met before) also came to church! We totally weren't expecting it at all. She's told us before that he doesn't really care either way if she wants to go to church, but he has no interest in it himself. So when they showed up we were all really surprised. He said that he had a good time though, and that he thought everyone was really nice and he wants to learn more. This is why it's so important to be friendly to people you don't recognize at church! You never know what kind of impact you might have in their conversion.

So, backtracking a little bit, Friday was an interesting day. During personal study we get a phone call from President Budge. Well, that's never a good sign when the Mission President calls you directly, right? Well, he then informed us that we were having an emergency transfer, and that a new missionary would be coming to join us the next day (Saturday) and then Elder Nakamura would transfer to the mission home on Tuesday and begin being trained as the comissarian for next transfer. That means that we're now in a 3-man companionship until tomorrow, and then Elder Nakamura will be leaving me for the last two weeks of the Transfer. My new companion's name is Elder Holden, and he seems pretty chill. So I guess that means I'll be celebrating Christmas with him instead of with Elder Nakamura.

Saturday was a pretty good day too though. Elder and Sister Harrison had a Christmas party with their neighbors, and they invited us (since they don't speak Japanese and we do). They have some really nice neighbors. It's actually really interesting to see them interact, because they're all like really tight friends. That's something that you don't see very often, in Japan or America. I think it would be pretty cool to live somewhere where you could be best friends with your neighbors. That wouldn't be a bad thing at all.